TICKY FULLERTON, PRESENTER: While there are hard times for entire industries, a new wave of innovation is sweeping across the globe.

Additive manufacturing is the high-tech field exciting scientists and manufacturers - and no BS here, I can assure you.

To tell us more, here's Neal Woolrich.

NEAL WOOLRICH, REPORTER: Well this may not seem like a typical manufacturing plant. There's no noisy equipment and very few workers, but it could well be the facility of the future. It uses a process called additive manufacturing where parts and moulds are built from the ground up using raw materials and some very sophisticated machinery.

BRUCE GREY, MD, ADVANCED MANUFACTURING CRC: Additive manufacturing is just that: it's about adding layers of material to build up a part to its finished state.

TRAVIS HARDY, SALES MANAGER, 3D PRINTING SOLUTIONS: What we do here, we have 3D printing machines and technologies that make additive manufacturing components in plastics and also metal materials, typically for engineering clients.

NEAL WOOLRICH: Additive manufacturing has only been around for about 20 years. It involves taking a raw material like powder or liquid resin, applying heat through a laser and creating an item layer by layer.

Initially, it was only used for prototypes or moulds, but in the past decade it's been used to create finished products as well.

TRAVIS HARDY: The industry's moving very fast into dental industry. Certainly medical devices - there are a lot of devices that we do make for the medical industry. It's revolutionising the way that manufacturing is being done.

NEAL WOOLRICH: Travis Hardy is the Australian sales manager for 3D Printing Solutions, a listed US company. He says a machine like this can make items like architectural models or automotive components in intricate detail and in quick time.

TRAVIS HARDY: For an architectural model, let's say, you would have a pattern maker or someone on the bench making these by hand and that could take up to two weeks. So, within 24 hours we have a model that someone can use to present to their customer or to their client.

NEAL WOOLRICH: At the moment, additive manufacturing is only a small part of the global manufacturing industry, in part because of its expensive price tag. 3D Systems' machines range in price from $1,300 to $1 million. But Bruce Grey from the Advanced Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre says cost is coming down.

BRUCE GREY: The problem we suffer from in Australia is lack of scale in most of our markets because we're - we've got a small population and we're remote from the major manufacturing markets in the Northern Hemisphere. These processes give local manufacturers a big opportunity to start to make components more economically in short runs.

TRAVIS HARDY: Really where this technology comes into its own is where you can make very complex parts that cannot be made any other way.

NEAL WOOLRICH: The Advanced Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre is now hoping to combine additive manufacturing with Australia's leading edge medical research facilities.

But it remains to be seen whether that can provide a lasting cure for a manufacturing industry that's already on its sick bed. To do that, additive manufacturing needs to be adopted on a much bigger scale, something that so far has proved elusive.